In this month(March), I am a little overwhelmed by the workload from school, especially from the numbers of IAs that we need to turn in. Because of that, I want to find something that can distract me from all the works for a short break, and I decided to go try baseball, hoping to release some stress out of it. I went to the Taroko sports batting stadium, which is a place to practice hitting the baseball. It was pretty hard at first, to follow through and hit the ball. I had some missed swings at first, but get to manage it quite well after more practices. After trying the practice for 80/km, I took a further step to try for 100/km. I found out that it is important to follow the ball and watch the ball for the entire swinging motion once the speed of the ball got even faster. Only by following the ball thoroughly can allow you to solidly hit a “contact” ball. I am delighted that I made this choice to come here, to take a break from life, so I get to reset myself and ready to go again. Here’s a short clip about this experience.

During the short break, everyone was supposed to take a break from everything and just relax and enjoy the holiday. However, as it is still in the volleyball season, I believe we cannot just relax for such a long time. Therefore, I came up with the proposal to do certain fitness workouts every single day during the break to maintain our conditions and muscle strength to my volleyball teammates. I plan to do 100 x core muscles and 100 x back muscles as these are the essential muscles used in playing volleyball. I asked my teammates to record theirs every day as well so that I can keep track of whether everyone actually did it or not. Despite the overall might not be evident, I believe these workouts definitely help us to keep in shape in season, to ultimately contributing to our ultimate goal: TISSA Championship. Here are some short clips of the workout my teammates and I recorded during the break:

As Chinese New Year is arriving soon, my family has once again started planning on following the traditional Chinese culture to worship our ancestors, which is to “burnt the joss paper-money”. However, I have always acknowledged the detrimental damage of this ritual to the air and causing even more severe air pollution problems.  So, this year I decided to step up for this problem but also keeping a balance to respect the Chinese culture we preserved. To do that, I propose the idea to buy a lesser amount of paper money, which still preserves the idea and symbolic representation to worship our ancestors but really decreases the carbon dioxide and other toxins produced through this ritual. My parents have acknowledged my effort in saving the planet environmentally and agreed to do it this year.

I believe if more people are willing to do this, we will be able to really take a step forward in saving the world that was once a utopia.  Making this choice in balancing our traditions and to the world show our action in responsible for our action, which fulfills and complete not just the traditional forms of life, but also life with ethics involved.

Recently, I have heard a new song from youtube that I personally think is very fascinating. I really like the lyrics and the overall mood created within. A while after, I suddenly have an innovative idea to play this song on marimba. I think it would be special as I don’t think anyone has played this song on marimba before. Most people played this song on the piano as there are versions specifically for piano versions. However, I decided to use the piano version music sheet on marimba as the structure of the piano and the marimba is the same by having the # and b on the upper section and the normal notes on the lower section. I have asked my music teacher to play the song with me as the music sheet is separated into the right hand and left hand based on the piano version. I will be playing the main melody of the song and my teacher will be playing the accompanying part. Here is the video of the song “過客” played in marimba:

As the novel coronavirus continues to ravage the world, I, personally, have begun to think more deeply as if there will be an end to it if the number of cases never has the trend of going down. Despite living in a relatively much safer environment compared to many other regions in the world, as one of the global citizens, I believe I have the duty to make an effort to this global issue even though my contribution might be minor to the overall circumstances.

The reason that Taiwan is a role model in combating coronavirus is mainly because of the major effort that all the health workers have put in during this period of time. With that being said, I would like to put an effort into giving a safer and more comprehensive environment to the health workers in Taiwan. After some research on the internet, I found an organization called “Give2Asia” and they have a specific program in supporting the frontline health workers and institutions responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

I would be supporting the program through donations that are accessible on the website. Moreover, I have put the link in my personal social media account, hoping that my friends can join me to support this program in an effort to combating the coronavirus pandemic as one of the global citizens on this planet.

In the last year of my high school volleyball career, my coaches and the athletic director were able to make it possible for the team and me to join the local division volleyball league and compete with even more challenging teams from the local schools. In the past, our school only joined the tournaments that are specifically hosted for all the international schools in Taiwan and East Asia. We didn’t really have the chance to officially compete with the local teams. I am grateful that I am able to experience it before I graduated from high school.

Despite we were not able to advance to the next round, I solidly believe I have learned a lot that cannot be learned otherwise if I didn’t get to play in this kind of tournament. Since I am the “only” person that stood as a libero in our team, this trip has been so significant as I was able to see where I could have done better or where I can still improve based on the outstanding performance from the liberos of the other teams in the tournament. Two specific improvements that I can verbally state are having better pacing and better positioning especially on receiving serves and spikes with no blockers. Other improvements are more leaning toward mentally and having that sort of “feeling” and “sense” that are not really expressible through words. Overall, it was an amazing experience that allows me to better understand the improvements I can make to better prepare for the upcoming TISSA tournament and season.

Continue with my CAS project with Simon, this week we decided to make a challenge based on filming a short clip of “how long can you hold onto it when doing plank”. Plank is a common and effective exercise that can be easily utilized in indoor exercise. It can train not just the core muscles, but also thigh muscle, calf muscle, and triceps…etc. The purpose of doing this plank challenge is to promote individuals to exercise indoor and having some motivation that comes from the connection with peers who are also such a challenge. It will act as a platform to not just connect people together through exercise, but also let more people actually take action to do exercise. I believe this idea will largely benefit our objective which is to promote indoor fitness exercise under this global pandemic. Here is the one I did and it will act as an exemplar on our social media account. I hope people do indeed enjoy this challenge.

Recently, math club has been practicing a game that I have not played before, known as “sudoku.” It is a type of game that fills in numbers that coherently fit into the overall boxes the numbers corresponded. In this CAS experience, I decided to learn to play this game, sudoku. At the start, it is hard to fill in those numbers because there are only three chances that you can make mistakes on plotting in the numbers, so I am very aware and careful when filling each of the numbers in the chart. After playing for several games, I became more familiar with the patterns and numerical tread within the game and began to complete the chart much faster. I enjoy this game very much as it is a complicated but somehow simple game that anyone can play. This game also helps to improve individuals in terms of intellectual components. The game helps me to help me understand my logic-based thinking ability to fill in the numbers with matching trends. Not only that, it improves my way of thinking to solve patterns and tread, to change from priorly attempting to solve it one by one to looking at the overall patterns to analyze which part should be solved first, ultimately improving my efficiency in solving pattern-type challenges and questions. I found my ability to be more logical especially on solving different trends of numbers, which this ability can also be applied to solving other questions not limited to numbers. I had a great time playing it and aim to complete the harder version in the future.

Due to the pandemic, this year, which is my senior year will not be having the ACAMIS tournament that would have been hosted overseas. However, our coaches tried to make our final year memorable as it would be with the ACAMIS tournament, so we were able to go against the Taiwan Division I Champion teams in a 3-day relocation training trip. Throughout this trip, I learned more than just volleyball expertise taught by them, but also essential life skills and attitudes toward practices and challenges. I believe I learned more than any trip to ACAMIS those past years and this trip is really meaningful to me. I learned and improved on the skill that I was aiming for this season which is to be better at receiving serves. I learn the importance of moving toward the ball with the entire body not just the  hands when passing a serve to the setter. Despite this is a tiny component in the overall receiving skill, this newly acquired skill allows me to be more consistent on receiving in a game and to better control the ball especially facing a float serve. The player that taught me the techniques is a U19 national team player which I am cherished that I am able to learn from her. This trip really benefits me a lot to achieve my ultimate goal, which is to be a better receiver as a libero.